AS SEEN ON BOTCHED!!! My TT Journey with Necrosis, Debridement, Holes & a Wound Vac... oh my! - Temecula, CA

This has to have been the scariest surgery for me, why.... cause I chose to have it! Thank goodness for the valium the night before, otherwise I'm sure I wouldn't have slept a wink.

My surgery was scheduled first thing in the morning, yay, so I wouldn't have all day to be scared, anxious, excited... scared some more. lol We show up to the place where the TT is to be performed & I'm taken back to change & have my IV put in. The lady doing my IV stuck me and said she hit a brick wall (ouch) so she was going to try my other hand. She stuck me in my other hand and said the same thing, wiggled the needle around inside (yah, that felt great) and said that she thinks shes got it. She put a whole bunch of tape on it cause it wasn't dripping right. Then they called my husband back. My IV stopped dripping completely so I asked him to let one of the nurses know, she came over (checked nothing) and said that it wasn't supposed to be because its turned off. Wrong! Anyhow, so then they have hubby leave cause its time to wheel me into the surgery room. As they're wheeling me back the nurse tells the anesthesiologist that we may have a problem with my IV and he says that he can't have a bad IV and that he may need to change it out. Once in the operating room and on the operating table the anesthesiologist starts wiggling my IV around to try to get it working right. He wrapped it around my ring finger and I remember looking up at it and seeing that it wasn't dripping consistently and wanting to just get up & leave. That's the last thing I remember.

I woke up in recovery, everything was great! They said they were going to call my hubby to come & pick me up. YAY! And then it happened.... I started feeling like I couldn't breathe. The nurse tried to reassure me that I couldn't breathe because I had a binder on me... wrong! Then the coughing started. At first I had them hand me tissues to spit what I was coughing up into. It was blood. By the time hubby got there I was couching and spitting the blood into the bowl & they had me on oxygen. Even with the oxygen at 10 my O2 saturation was only at 85! They gave me a breathing treatment and morphine (not sure why they gave me that). A nurse came by and asked the other nurse why I was so sleepy and she said she didn't know why. Then she asked me & I said cause she gave me morphine! The anesthesiologist came in to show me a breathing exercise to make my O2 saturation jump up. He said, now watch the screen, its crazy how much its going to go up. Every time I did it (which he had me do it like 5 times) my O2 saturation dropped.... whoops. Looks like that didn't work! After a while I was able to breathe on my own & released that Friday afternoon / evening.

Once home I couldn't eat much but I made sure I was taking all my pills and still the injections of lovenox (ouch those hurt & I was so glad when I was done with them!). The only pill giving me any issue was the gel capsule antibiotic. It kept irritating my throat and causing me to cough (btw, coughing after surgery is not only not suggested, its really painful!). We called my doc and she said that we could break open the capsule and put it in food but that didn't work, it tasted horrid! Saturday I was doing good, talking on the phone, walking around the house and sleeping in the automatic recliner. Sunday I couldn't breathe again. :( We called the doc and she wanted us to go to the emergency room at the affiliated facility of where I had my procedure done, but I really didn't want to go. I sat for a while on the toilet (just sitting there) and it seemed that sitting in a more upright position, I was actually able to breathe. Come to find out that sitting reclined back in the recliner when I had possible fluid in my lungs / chest probably wasn't a good thing! lol Never had a breathing problem after that!

Went to my first PO appointment where I almost fainted when the doc removed my binder! lol Its so weird to have it removed at first. I suggest laying down at least that first time when they remove it.

Not really sure when I actually got diagnosed with the necrosis but the doc knew pretty much at the first PO appointment that there may be an issue, it was just a matter of my body struggling and the affected area really declaring itself.

Its been a barrage of doctors appointments ever since.

I made it a personal goal of mine that I would not ask for either of my drains to be removed because my doctor told me that I would have them for 6-8 weeks due to my TT being such a large one (almost 12 pounds removed). On July 15th one drain was removed, the doctor also removed the tape (I wasn't allowed to shower so it wasn't coming off on its own) and after consulting with her peer, she did some debridement which is when my first hole appeared.

After more debridement that hole became much bigger on July 26th and we found out why my other drain wouldn't hold suction... it was exposed within the hole so it had to be removed. After that debridement I was told (doing wet to dry gauze, which we bought in bulk because we needed so much!) that I am going to be amazed at how much better this is going to look in 2 weeks.

Just a few days later (Aug. 2nd) I went into the doctors office and left with two huge holes. Not the amazing results I was expecting in the least!

So of course, now I'm starting to doubt my PS. I think she's in over her head. I did some more research on necrosis & debridement because at this point I just didn't want to be cut any more! Come to find out... that is not the answer at all. The debridement actually helps to speed the process up even though it seems like you're going backwards and not healing, all this bad tissue needs to be removed so that the good tissue down under it can multiply and fill it all in. During my research I discovered wound vacs and I brought it up to my PS who agreed that we should look into that. We went to a wound clinic on Aug. 8th. Not actually having the wound vac yet, Edith, at the wound clinic took measurements and packed my wounds (the two holes & where my belly button was supposed to be) with Hydrophera Blue. The very next day my hubby was laid off. :(

Time for the wound vac! On Monday Aug. 12 the wound vac came in and off to the wound clinic we went to have it put in. For the most part it's not painful but there is this one part that hurts so bad! It feels like I'm being stabbed in my open wound with a hot soldering iron! Lately the sponges have been getting stuck in my wounds because my body is healing that fast! The results from the wound vac are amazing! I've had it on for almost 3 weeks and everybody can tell that there's a huge difference in the size of the holes. We do sponge changes on Mon, Wed & Fri and those are the days that I get to shower... yay! Much better than the 52 some odd days I went without a shower before getting the wound vac!

Not sure how much longer I will need it (Sara from KCI, the maker of the wound vac, thinks mid to end of September but Edith at the wound clinic thinks end of October or November!) but I'm hoping to be healed by Halloween, my favorite holiday and my birthday is the next day. I am drinking my greens daily where I get 24 servings of fruits & vegetables and trying to keep my protein at 90 grams a day to help healing. The protein proves difficult at times due to it taking up so many of my allotted calories each day but I've recently found a protein powder that will give me 30 grams of protein for 125 calories... not bad! Oh, and its supposed to taste good too, looking forward to trying it.

Oh, and even though hubby getting laid off was a bad thing, it couldn't have happened at a better time. Dorothy at KCI said that we qualify for 100% of the wound vac charges to be free! This could have cost us $50 a day even with our blue cross blue shield insurance!

Everything is going well, wound vac is kicking butt! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to the day that I would become cordless though! lol

Just wanted to add that this surgery was actually a reward for me. At my highest weigh (pregnant with my son) I was 309 at 5'1.5" and 2 years after he was born I was 279. I had chest pains and was so scared that I was having a heart attack. That's when I decided to lose weight.

I was a tomboy growing up and played sports my whole life. AYSO soccer from age 5 all the way through my sophomore or junior year of high school. Played a couple of years of indoor soccer during the outdoor off season and then my freshman year in high school I lettered in Tennis, Soccer & Softball. Sophmore & junior year it was just Tennis & Soccer but I rode my bike to & from school and lived in my parents pool in the summer. After high school I played some roller hockey but shortly thereafter I became pregnant with my daughter. I had pre-eclampsia so I gained a lot of weight and never saw below 200 until she was about 16 years old!

Through diet & exercise I lost nearly 100 lbs, so this surgery was my reward for all that hard work.